Trends In Additive

To gauge how widely the Ford Motor Company uses 3D printing, just count the number of castings in one of its vehicle's engine and transmission. On newer vehicles, practically every one of those castings was prototyped using 3D sand printing.

Youngstown, Ohio — October 9, 2013. The National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, driven by the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM), proudly announces that it unveiled its rebrand to America Makes to kick start a unified, U.S.-based additive manufacturing and 3D printing movement yesterday to members only at its second Program Management Review (PMR) Meeting held at the DeYor Performing Arts Center in Youngstown. Also present at the meeting to show his support of the new America Makes identity and represent the expanding 3D desktop printing industry and community was Bre Pettis, CEO of MakerBot.

Have you ever seen a 3D arm scanner create a digital model of Abraham Lincoln's face? No? Then check out this iSpy with Jake Ervin as he explores the exhibits at this year's 3D in DC event. Some of the most exciting and innovative technologies in additive manufacturing were displayed at the Rayburn House Office Building. Jake speaks with professionals and a few kids to learn more about how additive technology is revolutionizing manufacturing.

The service applications of AM parts is increasing. This is the case for a number of polymeric materials with some being considered for or used in structural applications. Laser sintering (LS) is quite popular, and, while most aspects of this article will apply to other AM techniques, the focus here is polymeric parts built on LS fabricators.

Dave Bourell, University of Texas at Austin and David Leigh, Harvest Technologies

While additive manufacturing provides improvements in realizing designer's functional intent, it still is limited within some additive processes due to necessary residual materials requiring removal. Any additive process using either polymers or metals that requires support structure must subsequently employ means to remove such unwanted support structure. For powder-based processes that support structure is the non-sintered or non-melted materials themselves. In these cases, non-processed materials must be removed post-processing. Figure 1 depicts the challenges found in porous metal (“titanium foam”).

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) is currently one the most popular additive manufacturing (AM) technologies for the fabrication of end-use parts. SLS applications are constantly increasing across multiple industries going from the fabrication of consumer products like custom cases for smartphones to custom parts for military aircraft and even sophisticated implantable medical devices. The layer-by-layer technology that pioneered rapid prototyping applications is rapidly evolving into a rapid manufacturing mature process.

Tim Shinbara is VP – Manufacturing Technology with AMT. His key objective is to research, compile, and disseminate manufacturing technology information to AMT's membership. He has an intensive background in additive manufacturing and brings that technology expertise to AMT.

The goal of the Additive Manufacturing workshop at IMTS is to bring together manufacturing professionals who are interested in or are already applying additive manufacturing as a production resource. More than a 3D printing seminar, this workshop will focus on industrial applications of additive technologies for making functional components and end-use production parts.